‘Well, Maugan,’ she said, ‘so you are back. Now that this is a Catholic country you must conform or die.’ ‘The Spanish have conquered?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes. They are dragging the women through the streets by the hair.’ ‘But where is my family? Where are the Killigrews?’ ‘They would not conform, Maugan, so they are in there, in there, in there, where all heretics go…’
I looked across at the fire and saw that at the back of it was a heap of skulls and that the logs in the hearth were in fact a pile of dismembered human limbs. I struggled to get towards them in the hope that I might yet save one of them but was held back by the monks, who came to cluster around me, chattering in Spanish and other alien tongues. I shouted and screamed and swore but nothing availed. Then one of the monks came across with a piece of the fire and thrust it into my belly.
The old woman who found me fetched her friends but would not let them cut my throat; instead she had me carried to her hut and laid on her own straw pallet. She disregarded warnings that I had the plague and washed me and dressed the festering sore in my side. Then she squatted down to wait for me either to recover or to die.
It was perhaps forty-eight hours before I began to disentangle her round cautious inquiring face from the faces of fever and delusion. By then she was feeding me on lentil soup which she put into my mouth with a thick wooden ladle. Slowly the phantoms returned less often and I knew where I was and that the disease was on the wane.
The hut we were in was on a hill slope a little removed from the hamlet below. It appeared to be partly built into the rock of the hill, for the roof was of natural stone. On it for a long time I watched a spider in a strange semi-warfare with a colony of ants. And I watched the flies scavengers rubbing their legs and heads, buzzing around the other insects, privileged by the dimension of flight. Sometimes a lazy bee would bump against the wall, lost and clumsy.
For a long time I lay in this way, gaining slowly in strength but thinking very little, content in utter weakness to let the time drift by, watching day come to the window of the hut, blaze and fade and grow dark again. The woman, whose name was Carla, would come and go during the day, working in the old olive grove beside the hut which provided her with subsistence. Once a day, it seemed, she went down to the hamlet for water; sometimes in the evening curious neighbours would come to peer and question, but she drove them away.
She had grey hair tied tight back under a black cloth scarf, and cheeks like an onion, the skin high-coloured and loose; black eyes deep-set and changeless. At first we could understand nothing of each other her country Portuguese was too much for me, but after a time we began to understand words and simple phrases.
One day I was able to sit up, the next to move to the door of the hut and stare out. I could only speculate on what might have happened to George and Crocker. Thoughts of my own predicament came nearer to disturb and frighten. Although there might be little direct communication between these peasants and the Spanish, some rumour would be likely to reach them sooner or later. It was not as if we had merely escaped. The sooner I was on my way the better. But where would that way be? The mules had disappeared. The few precious stones I had left had also gone; I only hoped Carla had them. The best one could look for now was some quiet hamlet such as this where one could gradually pick up strength and the protective clothes and manners of the countryside. But much, much farther from Lagos.
While I was so ill I had slept on Carla’s pallet and she on the floor. I wanted to change this round but she would have none of it. With an ancient smile she indicated that I was her guest and so must have the place of honour.
She had never asked me who I was, how I had come to be alone and sick under a canopy of thin sacking in a cleft on a bare hillside. I had nothing about me to help her guess my nationality or business, but she seemed incurious. I was somebody who had come into her life and she had cared for me as she would have a sick animal.
I told her that I must be off soon; I could not trespass on her any longer; but she shook her head emphatically; I was not yet well enough, another week perhaps, there was no hurry. I questioned her about the countryside around. We were, she said, about two days by mule from Faro. She had never been that far, but she had heard it had recently been burned by the English and life was not resumed there yet. Much farther east, perhaps three more days, was a big river which divided Portugal from Spain. Between was country such as this, she thought; her nephew had once told her so.
About this time the weather at last broke; a dawn brought ink-blue skies and then thunder. Rain fell all day drumming like a military attack on roof and trees and cracked earth. The hillside changed into rivulets of yellow mud; dust-dry walls within the hut began to sweat, the olive trees bent under the weight. Then the storm cleared away and the following day was blue and sparkling. For the first time I felt a return of full vigour, and was ready to be off.
I asked Carla if she could find me any sort of peasant’s cloak and rough breeches, and she said she would try. A skin of water, a belt with some food, a pair of shoes, a stout stick and a knife; it was as much as one could expect, and more. I tried to thank her for what she had done, but she only grinned politely and shrugged it off. I said I wanted to leave on the following day, but she said there were signs against it. The new moon would be a better time, and that would be in two days.
The day before I was due to leave I spent out of doors, chopping and sawing wood for her and stacking it for the winter. From this hut you could see the hamlet just below and then across the shallow valley to the hillside beyond. As I recovered I had fallen into the habit of standing each night at the door of the hut to watch the sun set, then, as all the hills and valleys flushed with light, shadows would begin to creep along the fissures and up the clefts in the rock. The light would become more vivid as it was sucked up into the sky, the land more purple and then grey. There would be a moment or two of final splendour before the shadows rushed in like a sea and it was dark.
Tonight I was at the door when I saw five men on horseback coming down the pewter-coloured track on the opposite hill. I at once called Carla, who came and peered, but then said there was no cause for alarm; sometimes men went through this way on journeys west; they seldom visited the hamlet and never her hut. My supper was ready, it would go cold.
So after watching them out of sight round a corner of the hill I squatted beside her and took the soup cup in my hands and sipped it. Twice more I went to the door; the first time they were farther down the valley, the second time they had disappeared.
That day she had brought me an old cloak from the village and had turned out a grey shirt, worn but serviceable. With these I would have to do; I was grateful to her and told her so; she grinned and shrugged and sipped. Night fell and she stirred the wood fire to new cheerfulness.
I said when I left on the morrow, could she spare some bread to take with me, a few olives, water and perhaps a skin of wine? She said she had it all ready.
At the end of supper she muttered her evening prayers. As she was finishing a horse neighed.
I reached for my knife, slid away from the fire and crept on hands and knees to the door. Stars and a still night, two lights winking in the hamlet, a night bird crying. She was beside me, clutching my sleeve. I drew away and out of the hut. Nothing. Then the clink of a hoof.
Shadows and men loomed up. The old woman was in my way. As I raised the knife it was knocked out of my hand. I was dragged into the hut.